The National Tile Museum

Portugal has been covering its walls in tin-glazed tiles for five centuries, and this is the one place where the whole habit is laid out in order. The museum occupies the convent of Madre de Deus, founded in 1509, so the collection climbs through cloisters and a church heavy with gilt woodwork while the tiles move from geometric panels of the 1500s, through the blue and white narrative walls of the 1700s, to factory tiles and modern commissions for the metro. The single most looked-at object is a panorama of Lisbon painted around 1700, roughly twenty three metres long, showing the riverfront city as it stood before the 1755 earthquake.

History

The museum was founded in 1965 and became a National Museum in 1980, in the former Convent of Madre de Deus, founded by Queen Leonor in 1509, whose 16th-century Mannerist cloister, decorated church and sacristy form part of the visit (Wikipedia, National Museum of the Azulejo).

What you'll find

• The Lisbon panorama - a tiled view of the city as it was before 1755.
• The Madre de Deus church - gilt woodwork and tiled scenes in one room.
• The Manueline cloister - the small early sixteenth century cloister at the core.
• The chronological rooms - five centuries of tile in sequence, geometric to industrial.

When to go

Year-round and entirely indoors, which makes it a good wet-afternoon museum. It sits east of the centre in Xabregas, a bus ride from Praca do Comercio, and it is quietest in the first hour after opening. Like most Portuguese national museums it closes one day a week, so check before crossing the city.

Good to know

The location is the main complaint: it is not walkable from the tourist core and the bus takes a while. Tile after tile flattens into wallpaper if you try to read every label, so pick the panorama, the church and one century. Some rooms are dimly lit and the glass reflects. The cafe in the old convent kitchen keeps short hours.

Nearby

The riverside walk back towards Santa Apolonia and the Alfama.

Key facts